Cipriano Beredo III

Partner, Squire Sanders & Dempsey LLP

Cip Beredo has a LeBron James story. But it's not a basketball story. It's a lawyer-out-of-his-element story, and he told it only after he was asked about his contacts with the basketball star. Mr. Beredo is a partner at the Squire, Sanders & Dempsey law firm and spends most of his time doing mergers-and-acquisitions work. But the former Miami University football player also works with Squire Sanders partner Fred Nance, Mr. James' close adviser, on endorsement contracts. So one day a couple years ago, time was tight, and he had to pick up a signed endorsement contract at what was then Gund Arena — during a game. “Maverick (Carter, a James associate) told me he had put the signed contract in LeBron's car underneath a flap,” Mr. Beredo recalled. “'Tell the security guard at the garage you need the keys to LeBron's car,' Maverick said.” He made it past garage security after a phone call or two and then he started looking for a silver Range Rover. “You gotta know there's more than one silver Range Rover” in the players' parking garage, he said.

But with the car's remote in hand, he found the right one. Still, he couldn't get the driver's door open. “I got the hatch open and the alarm goes off, down inside the Gund, it's loud and it's reverberating,” he said. Crew members from a nearby TV production truck come out and someone shouts, “Who's breaking into LeBron's car?” Soon, he's surrounded by security guards. Fortunately, the guard who had been at the gate vouched for him and he left, contract in hand. The occasional mishap notwithstanding, Mr. Beredo enjoys negotiating corporate deals and then drawing up the detailed contracts. “I really like mastering a complex set of issues and needing to think creatively and quickly on your feet about how to best solve problems and how to be a tough, strong advocate for your clients, but without being an impediment to getting deals done,” he said.

Most of his work has been negotiating complex merger-and-acquisition agreements for companies such as Eaton Corp. and Cedar Fair LP, the owner of Cedar Point and other amusement parks. “I think the world of Cip — he's very, very smart, extremely hardworking and he has very strong interpersonal skills,” said Mr. Nance, Squire Sanders' regional managing partner. “He's got a tremendous future; he's one of our stars.” Mr. Beredo thanks the Cleveland Indians for the opportunity. Like many second-year Indiana University law students, he was interviewing for clerkships at law firms in Chicago. But he was doing it in the fall of 1997, when the Indians were on an ultimately unsuccessful run to win the World Series. “The whole time I was in Chicago, I was on the phone with my dad and my brothers, and seeing pictures of the city while watching the games on TV,” he said. “I was really discovering that my heart was here in town and I wanted to come back.” So he interviewed with Squire Sanders. “I was pleasantly surprised that I could come home and still have an international practice.” And he was able to convince his wife, Gina, also a law graduate of Indiana, to follow him to Cleveland. She is now a corporate counsel at American Greetings Corp. The couple lives in Rocky River and has two daughters and a newborn son.